The Last Coyote

was a case up in the hills a few years back. This little girl was missing. It was Laurel Canyon. It made the papers, TV. So the people up there organized search parties and all of that and a few days later one of the searchers, a teen-aged boy who was one of the girl’s neighbors, found her body under a log near Lookout Mountain. It turned out he was the killer. I got him to confess in fifteen minutes. The whole time of the search I was just waiting for the one who would find the body. It was percentages. He was a suspect before I even knew who it was.”
    “ Irving found your mother’s body.”
    “Yes. And he knew her before that. He told me once.”
    “It seems like a stretch to me.”
    “Yeah. Most people probably thought that about Mittel, too. Right up until they fished him out of the hot tub.”
    “Isn’t there an alternative scenario? Isn’t it possible that maybe the original detectives were correct in their assumption back then that there was a sex killer out there and that tracking him was hopeless?”
    “There’s always alternative scenarios.”
    “But you always seem drawn toward finding someone of power, a person of the establishment, to blame. Maybe that’s not the case here. Maybe it’s a symptom of your larger desire to blame society for what happened to your mother…and to you.”
    Bosch shook his head. He didn’t want to hear this.
    “You know, all this psychobabble…I don’t…Can we just talk about the photos?”
    “I’m sorry.”
    She looked down at the envelope as if she was seeing right through it to the photos inside it.
    “Well, it was very difficult for me to look at them. As far as their forensic value goes, there wasn’t a lot there. The photos show what I would call a statement homicide. The fact that the ligature, the belt, was still wrapped around her neck seems to indicate that the killer wanted police to know exactly what he did, that he had been deliberate, that he had had control over this victim. I also think the choice of placement is significant as well. The trash bin had no top. It was open. That suggests that placing the body there may not have been an effort to hide it. It was also a-”
    “He was saying she was trash.”
    “Right. Again, a statement. If he was just getting rid of a body, he could’ve put it anywhere in that alley, but he chose the open dumpster. Subconsciously or not, he was making a statement about her. So to make a statement such as that about a person, he would have to have known her to some degree. Known about her. Known she was a prostitute. Known enough to judge her.”
    Irving came to Bosch’s mind again but he said nothing.
    “Well,” he said instead, “couldn’t it have been a statement about all women? Could it be some sick fuck who-excuse me-some nut who hated all women and thought all women were trash? That way he wouldn’t have to have known her. Maybe somebody who simply wanted to kill a prostitute, any prostitute, to make a statement about them.”
    “Yes, that’s a possibility, but like you I’m going with the percentages. The kind of sick fuck you are talking about-which, incidentally, in psychobabble we call a sociopath-is much rarer than the one who keys on specific targets, specific women.”
    Bosch shook his head dismissively and looked out the window.
    “What is it?”
    “It’s just frustrating, that’s all. There wasn’t much in the murder book about them taking a hard look at anybody in her circle, any of the neighbors, nothing like that. To do it now is impossible. It makes me feel like it’s hopeless.”
    He thought of Meredith Roman. He could go to her to ask about his mother’s acquaintances and customers, but he didn’t know if he had the right to reawaken that part of her life.
    “You have to remember,” Hinojos said, “in 1961 a case like this would probably have seemed impossible to solve. They wouldn’t even have known how to start. It just didn’t happen as often as today.”
    “They’re almost impossible to solve today, too.”
    They sat in silence for a few moments. Bosch thought about the possibility that the killer was some hit-and-run nut. A serial killer who was long gone into the darkness of time. If that was the case, then his private investigation was over. It was a failure.
    “Do you have anything else on the photos?”
    “That’s really all I had-no, wait. There was one thing. And you may already have this.”
    She picked the envelope up and opened it. She